VARIATIONS IN MISSION LIFE IN CHINA.
THE present troubles in China bring out many thrilling experiences of the missionaries, which show that missionary life, especially in the interior provinces, is often fraught with danger and sore privation. Rev. W. C. Hill, recently from Japan, who is visiting his brother in this city, was a missionary in the far west province of Szechuan in 1895. He was one of the sufferers by an uprising which eventually cost the Chinese Government a large amount of money. With over a hundred other missionaries, he was compelled to fly for his life in the night. After the little band came the mob, destroying missions and spreading devastation over the entire country. Of that perilous experience, and the principal causes of such uprisings, Mr. Hill says:— "The trouble in Szechuan came with the appointment of a viceroy who wavered in his determination to use the power of the government to protect the missionaries. We were advised one afternoon that there was to be an uprising, and, knowing that the advice was from reliable sources, we determined to escape the town in the night. With my wife and all the others, we made our way to the Yangtze River, and then journeyed down the waterway 2,000 miles to Shanghai. The first hundred miles we traveled on bamboo rafts, and made the trip in eleven hours, in the rushing current of the river. Then we secured a houseboat and drifted many miles, to the head of stream navigation. From that time on we were safe, for we were lost track of by our pursuers, and they were afraid to follow farther. All of our property was destroyed, however, and it was some time before the government reimbursed us. "China is unlike our country in that everything depends upon the disposition of the government. It is not like a land where law reigns and jury trials prevail. The head of the government embodies all the law there is; and people follow the slightest leading of the viceroys, whose powers are absolute. A Chinese viceroy can cut off heads for the slightest provocation. He is a mighty man in his province, and has but to whisper to have all who hang upon his smiles or frowns at his feet. "The most unfriendly to foreigners in China are the student class, from which the officers are drawn. The common people, the ignorant and superstitious, are not generally hostile to Europeans, who can go about in the most distant provinces in comparative safety in ordinary times. It is only when one of the periodical outbreaks of popular passion arises that there is any danger. At such times it is worked up by the literary class and the officials. The imperial government realizes the necessity of protecting foreigners, but at times it is represented in the provinces by men who are weak in character, like the viceroy of Szechuan, and then disorder begins and grows."